Food and Farming
DuPont’s Herbicide Goes Rogue
In the corporate world’s tortured language, workers are no longer fired. They just experience an “employment adjustment.” But the most twisted euphemism I’ved heard in a long time comes from DuPont: “We are investigating the reports of these unfavorable tree symptoms,” the pesticide maker recently stated.
Truckers Play a Key Food Safety Role
Food safety is running afoul in Springdale — in more ways than one. First, meat and grain agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. recalled 36 million pounds of ground turkey linked to a salmonella outbreak and temporarily shut its turkey processing plant in the Arkansas city in early August. Then, a Tyson Foods driver died after being pinned between two truck trailers outside a Springdale poultry plant.
Waiter, There’s a Newfangled Technology in My Soup
The U.S. food system has a new bedfellow, and it may already be on your plate.
Casino Crops
Thanks to decades of deregulated agriculture, markets for corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and other farm commodities have become high-stakes casinos. If family farmers are to be stewards of the land and safe, nutritious local supplies of food are what we want, then we must implement tried and true policies of supply management and conservation.
McDiabetes: Top Docs Tell McDonald’s To Stop Marketing Junk
McDonald’s should heed a call from some of the nation’s leading health professionals and stop marketing junk food to kids.
America Shouldn’t Scrimp on Food Safety
Americans are becoming too familiar with imported foodborne illnesses. Remember the tainted dog food from China and those salmonella-laced hot peppers shipped from Mexico? Now a virulent strain of E. coli is racing across Europe, possibly heading toward our shores.
Stay Healthy
My plan is modest, universal, and foolproof. If the nation were to embrace it, we’d not only cut health care costs in half, our budget deficit would shrink to the equivalent of spare change. This is my plan: Stay healthy.
A Volatile Agenda on Agriculture
Barack Obama’s trade policy, as embodied by the pending U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement, sadly resembles that of George W. Bush. It promotes export growth and investment at the expense of local economies and resilient food systems. This is unfortunate, not only because it fails to deliver the “21st-century” trade agenda President Obama’s promised on the campaign trail, but also because it ignores some of the key lessons from NAFTA and the 2008 global food price crisis.
Big Bad Free Trade Accord
Making a Statement with Our Tractors
Madison, Wisconsin is truly an amazing scene of beauty — as well as unprecedented political mobilization. Among the throngs of demonstrators, you’ll find Democrats, Republicans, independents, progressives, libertarians, and socialists walking together, discussing real solutions while sowing the seeds of solidarity.
